‘The Girl on the Train’ Critical Roundup: Reviewers Say Emily Blunt Vehicle Gets Lost Along the Way
Early reviews for “The Girl on the Train” are in, and most are lukewarm at best. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich is hardly a fan, inviting us to “imagine if ‘Gone Girl’ had been developed as a toothless network television pilot — if it had been stripped of its subversive approach to gender dynamics, bludgeoned free of its sadistic gallows humor and shot like a very special episode of ‘NCIS: Suburbia'” and giving the film a D+.
Entertainment Weekly‘s Leah Greenblatt is considerably more praiseworthy in her A- review:
“[Taylor] deftly translates the bleak, raw-boned menace and tricky time signatures of Train’s intertwined plotlines, and draws remarkably vivid performances from his cast, particularly his two female leads.”
Owen Gleiberman of Variety is mixed, but ultimately positive:
“As a big-screen thriller, ‘The Girl on a Train’ is just so-so, but taken as 112 minutes of upscale psychodramatic confessional bad-behavior porn, it generates a voyeuristic zing that’s sure to carry audiences along.”
READ MORE: ‘The Girl on the Train’ Trailer: Emily Blunt & Justin Theroux Star In Mysterious Relationship Thriller
In a more ambivalent review of The Telegraph, Tim Robey gives Tate Taylor’s adaptation three stars out of five and credits Emily Blunt’s performance for most of that:
“Blunt’s Rachel might be a soused and broken bit of human wreckage, but she’s better than all this: there are too many moments when you wish this raddled stalker had simply been allowed to direct her own film.”
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Todd McCarthy leans toward the negative:
“The puzzle of how the various personal and narrative pieces will eventually fit together exerts a smidgen of interest, but the characters are so dour and un-dimensional as to invite no curiosity about them.”
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